Paul"s Wish Lists

I HAVE MOVED

Monday, August 20, 2007

I feel like i've been so poor in blogging lately. Not that i'm one of those people that feels i have to blog everyday. I know the masses of you that hang on my every word can live without hearing from me for a few days. No - i'm missing blogging because i have so much i wanted to blog about but have been to busy with all of said things to actually get around to doing it.

So...let's play a little catch-up:

New Business BlogComing out of Barcamp, Christy and i talked a lot about what she/we're doing with Ghia. Among other things, i'm going to start blogging on the Ghia corporate blog. First entry: here!

I'm really excited about how the business is doing so far, and looking forward to pushing it further. As much as i ragged some of the presenters at Barcamp in my last post, i really did learn a lot. Christy's working on our Google Local entry and we're thinking of doing a site re-design soon. Christy has done an amazing job with the business so far, but she's been working largely by herself. I'm pumped about getting more involved and getting the rust off my web and marketing skills.

We already spent some of yesterday shooting pics for the new inventory we got in last week. Check for it on the site soon!

Blockbuster TradeJust a couple of weeks ago i posted about how happy i was that Blockbuster had bought MovieLink. I was already very happy with the value we were getting with Blockbuster Online (we locked ourselves into a great rate many months ago) and i was looking forward to them adding the downloadble movie features.

Well, last Friday i got an email from Blockbuster titled something along the lines of "Changes to your Blockbuster Account". I was excited. I was ready to open it up and find out that they were going to give us the option to do downloadable movies instead of in-store exchanges, or better yet both. Um....no. Nothing about downloadable movies was mentioned, but they did explain that my previous plan of 7 movies (4 in store, 3 in the mail) per month for $7.99 was being discontinued (in reality they stopped offering this to new subscribers months ago) and i would have to choose another plan. The offer they made instead was 4 movies (2 in-store, 2 in the mail) for $7.99 - what a deal! Same price, 40% fewer movies!

So half out of looking for a better deal, and half out of anger/spite, we switched to Netflix this weekend. Just after i'd starting swapping recommendations and stuff with my sister and my friend Amber on Blockbuster. Oh well. Now we get to find friends that have Netflix. Anyone? Click here to set us up as friends on Netflix.

Predators and the CityThere has also been a lot going on in the world of the Predators.For more reading i advise the Forechecker. He continues his marvelous assessment of the situation.

Essentially the local ownership group is asking the Metro government for $3 million more per year (according to them this is being required by their creditors) and a guarantee of 14,000 in paid attendance (so the team doesn't lose on league revenue sharing). In exchange they are offering to donate the first $3 million in profits every year (if/when there are any) to local charities and groups, and are promising to take fuller advantage of the Sommet Center as a facility and increase the number of events (tax generating events) held there. Sounds fair enough to me. Much ado made out of very little last week, i think.

Not a level headed move, but you did admit it's half out of spite so as you'll still end up getting less form Netflix than you did on your old BB plan, that should placate you in some way. Yep, only way to keep dollar cost the same is 1-out with Netflix, $7.99 I guarantee you'll be throttled after one month if not after your trial, so you'll still get only 4 movies per month. Same as BB.Or you could do $13.99 with 2-out and get 8 movies per month, after throttling, same as your old BB. But then, gee, you'll be paying, ummm....75% MORE! LOLAll over the net you see everyone going to netlfix, supposedly, out of anger, but don't understand that they aren't going to get a better deal.And having had both, yes, netlfix turnaround time slows down as time goes on.Shouldn't take more than a month til you see what I mean. Good luck!

I don't think you get how Netflix works with the online stuff. I know you aren't looking at their current plans, because they don't have anything for $7.99 right now.

Let us compare current plan offerings.

Since Netflix does online movies by the hour, we'll factor an average movie as being 2.5 hours (which is a little long, but we'll go with that). We'll also assume we can watch a movie every 4 days with 1 hour at a time, and every 2 days with multiple out at a time - which is about what we personally average at best anyway. We do have a life you know.

SO the real sweet spot is clearly Netflix service for $8.99 per month. Especially given that Blockbuster's plan requires driving to and from the store to get that extra value. We did that for a while and it wasn't horrible. But being able to pull something up online totally on a whim is pretty awesome.

Given, if we had more eyes watching movies. Kids in one room (which we don't have) and grown-ups in the other, then we might be able to move through more movies and this might look different. In that case though, Netflix ability to have multiple queue's under one account makes Blockbuster look antique.

Blockbuster used to have some great account offerings, but they just screwed us out of them.

We currently have the $4.99 plan from Netflix and have enough of a life outside of our TV (projector actually) that we probably won't even max out that plan.

The time in between movies isn't that big a deal to us either way. We have too much other stuff to do. Besides, the online streaming through Netflix makes the wait between movies about 45 seconds if we really wanted it to be.

I have had netflix for nearly 2 years now. not quite sure what you mean about slow turn around. If I put movies in the mail on Wed morning on my way to work. I get new 1s on Sat. I can get 2 shipments a week (6 movies) so thats nearly 24 movies a month. I did the math on my history of rentals recently. I averaged 15 movies a month over the past 2 years.